2008-2-PHI130.Week04

PHI130 Week 4: Body and soul in Plato

Readings

Plato, Symposium

Plato, Symposium 202a-212c, p.79-95.

Augustine, City of God

Augustine, City of God, Book VIII, chapter 5-8, trans. by G. Walsh and G. Morgan (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952), p.28-36.

Petrarcha, The Canzoniere

Petrarcha, The Canzoniere, trans. M. Musa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p.194-196.

Thomas Gould, Platonic Love

Thomas Gould, Platonic Love. "The Platonic love distinguished from the rival theories of the nature of love: The Christian, the Romantic and the Freudian theories", in Platonic love (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1963), p.1-18.

Reading Questions

• Plato, extract from the Symposium
  • What does it mean to say that love is of an 'intermediate nature'?
  • According to Plato, the only object of men's love is the good. How is this consistent with the wide range of things that Plato classifies as instances of 'love'?
  • How is physical love related to the desire for the 'perpetual possession of the good'?
  • How is beauty related to good, and to love?
  • According to Plato, immortality to be gained through ones "spiritual children" is superior to that gained through human children. What does this mean and what, as a consequence, is the most valuable kind of love?
  • What is the path to be taken to the goal of achieving immortality through spiritual progeny? How does this ascent correspond to the ascent through the levels described in the allegory of the Cave?
  • How does appreciation of instances of beauty lead to knowledge of absolute beauty?
  • What effect will the contemplation of absolute beauty have on a person's life?

• Augustine, extract from The City of God
  • Why does Augustine approve of the Platonist philosophy? What are the parallels between Plato's idea of the good and Christian theology?
  • Augustine claims that a philosopher becomes happy when he begins to rejoice in God. What takes the role of loving or rejoicing in God in Plato's philosophy?

• Petrarch, extract from Canzoniere
  • How does the view of love expressed in this poem connect with Plato's idea that the understanding of divine or absolute love may arise out of the love of the beauty of an individual.

• Thomas Gould, extract from Platonic Love
  • Why, according to Gould, is modern usage of the expression "Platonic love" a degradation of Plato's actual concept of love. What do the two conceptions have in common?
  • What claim about love does Gould argue the Platonic, Christian, Romantic and Freudian interpretations of love have in common? What are their main points of difference?